Steven Plaut

Ariel Sharon has presented his "disengagement plan" to the White House, and it has been endorsed by President Bush. The Sharon political machine, backed by the Labor Party's machine and the Israeli Left, has flooded the Israeli media with ads and promotions for the plan. Many in Israel are presuming that because Arab terrorist groups and the Arab states profess to be outraged by it, it must in fact be a constructive plan. Arab critics of course are outraged because the plan does not provide for the immediate liquidation of Israel and its Jewish population and they oppose all plans that are missing these essential genocidal clauses. While the Sharon-Bush "plan" has a few positive features, it augurs badly and embodies existential dangers for Israel.

So what is so wrong with the plan?

1. It rewards terrorism. Ever since signing the first Oslo "Accords," the Palestinian Arabs showed their unwillingness to comply with any of their written commitments by engaging in endless daily terrorist atrocities. The "plan" rewards the terror by delivering to the terrorists a Gaza Strip ethnically cleansed of Jews. Guess how the Iraqi terrorists shooting Allied troops will understand and interpret this "deal"!

2. The "plan" is a recipe for escalated terrorism. If Israel has trouble suppressing terror today, when the Gaza Strip is full of Jews and Israeli soldiers, what will happen once they are evicted? What will stand in the way of the PLO escalating the violence, firing hundreds more rockets into Negev civilian communities, and sending out dozens of new suicide bombers? What does Ariel Sharon think the PLO will do in Gaza once the "settlers" are evicted? Take up knitting?

3. It is an evil precedent. It signals that Israel is willing to conduct "talks and dialogue" even while PLO terrorists daily murder its civilians. It signals that Israel is willing ultimately to abandon Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to the PLO without the PLO ever having to comply with a single thing.

4. There is no "conditionality" at all in the "deal." Israel's concessions are to be carried out without the smallest gesture from the PLO, and without the requirement that the PLO comply first with a single clause in any of the accords that it has already signed in the past!

5. While Sharon and his people have hailed the "deal" with President Bush as effectively recognizing Israel's rights to maintain "groups of settlements" where they are concentrated, such as around Ariel, Colin Powell is already backing off from this publicly and declaring there is no such US acknowledgement of Israel's rights.

6. While the "deal" and joint announcement are being touted by Sharon's people as declaring there is and will be no such thing as a "Palestinian Right of Return" to Israel, Arafat and his minions have already re-pledged that there will be no ceasefire until this "right," which is nothing more than the "right" to dismantle and destroy Israel, is accepted in full. Nothing in the plan is conditioned on Arafat and the PLO publicly renouncing this "Right." And the US cannot be relied upon in this regard. There was a time when the U.S. was "firmly and permanently committed" to refusing to consider anything more than limited autonomy for the "Palestinians" and certainly no "state." Look where we are now.

7. The "plan" relinquishes Israel's moral claim to the rights of Jews to live anywhere they wish within the Land of Israel. The plan ethnically cleanses Jews from the Gaza Strip and parts of Samaria. There is nothing in the plan that limits the rights of Arabs to live anywhere they wish in the Land of Israel, including in Israel's own capital city, Jerusalem. (Incredibly, Israel has allowed a huge wave of Arab migration to Jerusalem in recent decades.) The plan has Israel renouncing all "permanent" military installations in the Gaza Strip, including its radar facilities, needed to locate Palestinian Arab smuggling boats, and this is not conditional on such niceties as the PLO halting rocket firings from Gaza into Jewish civilian areas or its sending out of suicide bombers.

8. Israel largely renounces its right to operate checkpoints and inspections. This damages Israel's ability to do anything to block the movement of terrorists.

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What does Ariel Sharon think the PLO will do in Gaza once the "settlers" are evicted? Take up knitting?

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9. The joint statement says that the Gaza Strip will be "demilitarized." Previous "accords" with the PLO said the same thing and there were never any Israeli nor American attempts to force compliance. Since the PLO is not even a party to this Sharon-Bush "deal," this clause is little more than an insult to the intelligence. And note that demilitarization is not a condition for anything. Israeli concessions are not conditioned on demilitarization and Israel may not abandon its "permanent" concessions when it turns out Gaza is not demilitarized.

10. Israel once again agrees to the PLO operating an army. Guess against whom this army will be used. If you think it will be used against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.

11. Israel pledges to continue to allow large numbers of Palestinian Arabs to enter Israel daily as "day workers," a guaranteed program for many new suicide bombers blowing up Israeli buses.

12. Israel pledges to continue to bankroll the terrorists, and this financing is conditioned on nothing. No conditionality on compliance by the PLO with anything. No conditionality on ending the atrocities. Nothing.

13. The destruction and abandonment of Israeli settlements, with no PLO quid pro quo, is an open declaration that no act of violence by Arabs will ever go unrewarded. It sets the most dangerous precedent imaginable. Eviction of Jews from large swaths of their homeland while never evicting a single Arab from anywhere has become the guiding principle for all future diplomacy.
14. While criticizing the PLO's "lack of action" to stop the Holocaust, the joint announcement does not explicitly denounce Arafat for leading, ordering and initiating most of the terrorism. There are no American sanctions against the PLO for its non-compliance with any of its previous commitments, nor any sanctions against it for the endless mass murders it has committed.

15. The plan envisages Palestinian "refugees" being resettled in Arab states, including the future "state" of "Palestine." The word "only" is conspicuously absent.

16. Nothing in the agreement is conditioned upon the PLO ending its campaign to destroy Israel, nor upon its acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist.

17. The "plan" abandons the "Land for Peace" formula imposed on Israel by its leftist governments of the past, and replaces it with "Land for Nothing."

18. The plan is anti-democratic. Sharon ran for office opposing just such a plan being touted by the Labor Party under Amram Mitzna. Voters elected Sharon on that platform and because they opposed Mitzna's plan, yet here is Sharon implementing it by fiat.

19. Ma'ariv, on April 16, reports that the plan has secret unpublished clauses involving Israeli agreement to additional concessions not stated in the public "deal." The White House knows the contents of this document. Israeli voters do not. What does that suggest to you?

20. Sharon, President Bush, and Prime Minister Blair all still describe this "new" plan as a stage in the "Road Map" that will install an armed terrorist state in the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. 

Steven Plaut is professor of economics at Haifa University.